While I Generally Agree, I Am Going To Go Against Type And Share One Thing That Did Always Bug Me About

While I generally agree, I am going to go against type and share one thing that did always bug me about the Discworld: a lot of the ordinary protagonists turn out to be scions of important families. Vimes is first introduced as an alcoholic cop, but by Feet of Clay he's the descendant of the man who led the revolution against monarchy and killed the last king. Angua is an "ordinary" werewolf in Men at Arms but the daughter of one of the three most important families in Uberwald by The Fifth Elephant. Even the Weatherwax family is several times referred to as one with a lot of innate power (I am excluding Carrot from this because the fact that he is The One True King was always the joke).

It doesn't mean that there aren't characters who are, in fact, common folks. Or that these changes aren't very interesting directions for the characters. But it's definitely a pattern.

I think that the real reason that Terry Pratchett is my favourite fantasy writer is that he’s the only one who really centres working people in his stories. I mean, Game of Thrones is almost entirely about the antics of rival aristocrats; Harry Potter is heir to two family fortunes and the subject of a prophecy and goes to an elite boarding school; even the Hobbits (save Sam) in The Lord of the Rings are minor gentry. Meanwhile, who are the main protagonists in Discworld? A recovering-alcoholic cop; an old peasant woman who lives in a cottage; a conman who was forced to take over the post-office. Pratchett writes entire novels about classes of people that other writers treat as background characters. He’s not condescending in his depictions; he’s willing to show enlisted soldiers as people, rather than arrow-fodder; and he’s aware that even ‘simple peasants’ know detailed information about things that wizards and knights can’t be arsed to care about; that everything about the world takes a hell of a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and that most people never see, And he makes sure that you know this, too.